Conventional computers have busses that connect a computer processor (e.g. an x86 CPU) with other system devices such as graphics cards. These busses typically comply with a standard, including the currently popular PCI Express (PCIe) standard. PCIe allows for data rates up to 8 Gbs, and PCIe devices can include 1 to 16″ lanes.
These internal system data rates are much higher than many conventional network communication data rates. For example, Ethernet network communications were standardized as IEEE 802.3 in 1983. Over the years, Ethernet data rates have increased from the original 1 Mbps to the currently popular Gigabit Ethernet implementation (1000BASE-T), which has rates of 1 Gbps, as well as other higher rate implementations.
If it is desired to allow PCIe hosts to provide data to external peripheral devices via a network communication such as Ethernet, these differences in data rates would need to be accounted for and accommodated to avoid significant data loss, for example.